Sunday, January 24, 2016

The Guild of
Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) on Sunday described as unfortunate and
ridiculous a statement credited to members of the Online Publishers Association
of Nigeria (OPAN) with respect to the meeting held on Friday between the
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and Online Publishers
in Lagos.

Besides,
GOCOP decried a deliberate attempt by OPAN to distort facts relating to its
formation.

It further
expressed shock at the orchestrated campaign aimed at dragging the name of the
President's Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, a
thoroughbred professional, in the mud by a group it described as charlatans who
have taken their deceit of being professional journalists too far.

GOCOP made
its position known in a statement endorsed by its Acting President, Musikilu
Mojeed; General Secretary, Dotun Oladipo; and Publicity Secretary, Olumide
Iyanda, sayingthat not all members of
OPAN could be described as professional journalists.

Rather, it
said many of those who make up the organisation are people who worked on the
fringes in media houses and have taken to online journalism principally as tool
for blackmail and extortion of money.

GOCOP also
said this is even reflected in the membership of the association's Board of
Trustees, which is made up of a columnist with The Guardian and former Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity to former President Goodluck Jonathan, Dr.
Reuben Abati; some unknown lawyers; engineers; and Indians.

GOCOP said
the statement credited to OPAN was clearly attention seeking and part of the
carefully planned strategies to embarrass the current government and blackmail
it into giving it undeserved recognition.

Further,
GOCOP said this is more so that OPAN, especially its leadership, is made up of
people with questionable characters.

"These
are people who have spent months and days in Kirikiri Prisons in Lagos State
and the dungeon of the Department of State Services for attempt to blackmail
and extort money from eminent Nigerians, including prominent businessman, Femi
Otedola; and a former Governor of Niger State, Dr. Babangida Aliyu.

"These
are people who did not work for a single day as professional journalists, but
as marketers, personal assistants and cameramen in media houses."

Recalling
the early days of the formation of GOCOP, the statement said the leadership of
the online organisation, made up of seasoned journalists, with many boasting of
over 25 years experience and rising to become Editors and Desk Heads of
renowned newspapers, became aware of the "existence" of OPAN after it
made moves to register with the Corporate Affairs Commission.

It recalled
that a team of its officials, made up of a former President, Malachy Agbo, who
is now the Chairman of Igbo Etiti Local Government Area of Enugu State, and
Oladipo, met with the so-called President of OPAN, Olufemi Awoyemi, in his
office in Lagos State to see how the emerging group could fuse into the
existing one.

However, the
GOCOP group came out shell shocked with the revelations from the meeting.

Awoyemi said
OPAN was formed and registered four years before the meeting but that they had
kept its existence only to the members, who were less than five, with majority
of them based outside the country.

He equally
gave part of the terms for fusing as the repayment of the registration fee of
the association, which he said would be deducted first from any money made by
the association before members could begin to benefit financially.

When asked
how much the registration fee was, Awoyemi said OPAN was registered in 2001 in
the United Kingdom with £65,000 (Sixty-five thousand pounds).

At this
point, Agbo told Awoyemi that the emerging body was not intended to be a money
making association but a peer review gathering that would leverage on the
experience of its members to bring sanity to online journalism.

After the
meeting, OPAN members, working in concert with Abati, who deployed the powers
of the Presidency, frustrated efforts to register the new body, with security
agents threatening the leadership of the emerging body.

What was
most curious, according to GOCOP, was that the initial name sent to the CAC,
the Nigerian Online Publishers Association, was endorsed and granted
registration, with the certificate of registration issued.

A few weeks
after, CAC wrote NOPA claiming that it registered the association in error as
OPAN was already in existence.

It took a
long battle for CAC to agree to the name GOCOP.

The name was
even suggested to the online publishers by CAC.

And this
came amid threat of heading to the law court to challenge the CAC.

It also took
OPAN, which claimed it was registered in 2001, over 14 years to formally launch
the association.

OPAN was
launched about a month after GOCOP did its own formal launch in 2015, which was
attended by the likes of a former Chairman of The Punch titles, Chief Ajibola
Ogunsola; the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara,
represented by the Chairman of the House Committee on Information, Alhaji
Abdulrasak Namdas; the Founder of Zinox, Leo Stanley Eke, who delivered the
keynote address; the Director General of the Debt Management Office, Dr.
Abraham Nwankwo; and Adesina.

The
statement by Mojeed, Oladipo and Iyanda said most members of GOCOP belong to
the elite group of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, while none of those in OPAN
qualifies to belong to any journalism association in the country, including the
Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ).

Part of the
statement added, "In mentioning a Special Adviser in the Presidency in
their statement, by which we know they are referring to the President's Special
Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, OPAN is only seeking to drag
a man of integrity, who insisted throughout the years OPAN had the backing of
Abati that the right thing be done, into a needless controversy.

"There
is no one who does not know that Mr. Adesina is a thoroughbred professional who
will not stand by impostors and never-do-goods.

"And
for the records, Adesina, being a concerned stakeholder and then President of
the Nigerian Guild of Editors, had been a strong pillar of support for GOCOP
right from its formative stage. At that time, he agreed to be a member of the
Board of Trustees of GOCOP. This was even when he had no inkling he was going
to emerge the presidential spokesman.

"So
also do we know that the choice of those who attended the meeting with Alhaji
Lai Mohammed was carefully thought through and not men of doubtful standings
who have spent days and months behind bars for failed attempts to blackmail.

"While
we do not query anyone's right of association, our stand still remains as an
association: no person of doubtful character will be allowed to be a member of
GOCOP. Only thoroughbred professionals and people of integrity. Members of OPAN
have a right of association, but they should remain within their confines and
not cast aspersion on others who have devoted their lives to making a name for
themselves in journalism and are professionals in the real sense of the word.

"And
thoroughbred professionals indeed abound in GOCOP, with most of the publishers
having worked at the highest levels in publications such as Thisday, Punch,
Tribune, Newswatch, Tell, The News, The Nation, Nigerian Compass, New Telegraph
and Champion as Editors.

"We do
not intend going beyond this for now as documents in our possession will be
made available to the public on the atrocities of these charlatans if they push
their luck any further.

"Our
aim is to professionalize the practice of online journalism and not engage in
blackmail, which has given journalism a bad name in the country."